Saint Thomas Aquinas

Sunday, March 30, 2014

If you want to actually learn about the real history of the Catholic Church, I highly recommend Thomas Woods' 13 part series on the history of the Catholic Church. It is amazing how so many idiots think that Bill Maher and other buffoons are telling them the truth about the Catholic Church. For example Bill Maher has regularly told the same lie that religion has been responsible for most of the wars and violence over the centuries. He also mocks Catholics on a regular basis and accuses them of being an enemy of reason. Yet, the Catholic Church has demonstrated the highest forms of reason over the centuries than any other group. In fact, we can accurately say that the Catholic Church has built western civilization, and has given more dignity to human beings than any other group that has ever existed. What has atheism given us a group? Nothing, thats what.

I recommend that Catholics learn the history of their faith so when you run up against a parrot of Maher or Hitchens you can show them how ridiculous their statements are. Below is the first part of the series. Navigate to the right of the YouTube page to follow the rest of the series.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

At this point in time in the history of the Church, modernism is a common plague that we all face as Catholics. There are many heretics in the Church trying to destroy the faith. We have so many wolves in sheep's clothing right now lurking about the Church, that many may not even recognize the modernist error for what it is anymore. Below is an excerpt from a book of lectures called 'Modernism and Modern Thought' by Father Bampton SJ published in 1913. The quoted passage picks up after Bampton describes the proper understanding of Catholic dogma, summed up as follows, "The Church must formulate her doctrine in language clear and definite
and precise, And truths so formulated are what are termed Dogmas. That
is Dogmatic teaching, as Catholics understand it.
Here we have clear notions upon such points as Revelation, the Church, Faith, Authority, Dogma." Then he proceeds to explain the scourge of Modernism.

Now Modernism undertakes to reconcile Catholic Christianity with modern
thought. Well and good. If Modernism is to do that, the Christianity
just described is what it has got to reconcile with modern thought. Let
us see how Modernism sets about it.

In the first place, the Modernist begins with a philosophical assumption
which those who have followed the last lecture will have no difficulty
in recognising. That assumption is that all we know with intellectual
knowledge is not reality, but only appearances. Phenomena we know -- the
Modernist says -- but as to things, those we do not know, and cannot.
That, as we saw in our last lecture, is the philosophy of Kant, pure and
simple. And what follows from this, as was said then, is that we cannot
know with intellectual
knowledge God and the supernatural. So far the Modernist agrees with Kant.{1}
But he agrees with him also in saying that we have another means of
reaching God and the supernatural. Kant calls that other means the
Practical Reason. The Modernist prefers to call it the Religious
Sentiment, or Religious Experience.{2}
And the Modernist argues in this wise: "Man, he says, feels within
himself instinctively the need of the Divine. That need of the Divine
excites in him a corresponding sentiment, a sentiment described by one
of the Modernists as 'the ceaseless palpitation of the human soul
panting for the Divine' (Buisson). That sentiment is the Religious
Sentiment, and is God revealing himself to the soul of the man. Thus
considered, that Religious Sentiment
is Revelation. Further, the Religious Sentiment unites the soul with
God, it is an 'inward recognition of God, a response of spirit to
spirit.'{3} Thus considered, the Religious Sentiment is Faith."

Here, then, we have Revelation and Faith, as Modernists understand them,
and observe the contrast with the Catholic notions of Revelation and
Faith, as just described, In the Catholic sense, Revelation is something
external, something that comes to the soul from without, from the oral
teaching of Christ and the Church, and Faith is acceptance of that
Revelation. In the Modernist sense, Revelation is wholly internal, a
psychological experience, and Faith is the soul's response to it. To the
Catholic, Revelation is statement, and Faith is belief in the statement
made. To the Modernist, Revelation and Faith are experience.{4} To the Catholic, the content of Revelation, which is the object of
Faith, is truth addressed to the intelligence. To the Modernist, it is
truth addressed to the feelings, to the emotional faculty. That brings
religion perilously near to Matthew Arnold's definition of religion:
"Morality touched with emotion."

Again -- the Modernist proceeds -- God thus apprehended by the religious
sentiment, is indwelling, immanent in the soul, and this doctrine of
God indwelling in the soul and apprehended as revealing Himself to the
soul, not by means of any external teaching, but through the soul's
inward experience, is the Modernist doctrine of Vital Immanence.{5}
Here we recognise Kant's influence again. It is true that theories of
immanence are older than Kant. In one form or another they are as old as
philosophy itself, as old as the Stoics, at least. And there is a
theory of immanence which is true.{6} But Kant's was a false theory of immanence, and the
Vital Immanence of the Modernists is derived from that.{7}

We have seen what the Modernist understands by Revelation and Faith.
They depend upon Vital Immanence, and are reducible to Religious
Experience. Now it is natural that a man should wish to give some
account to himself of his religious experience, that he should wish to
interpret it to himself, to translate his religious experience into
words. And for this purpose his reason begins to work upon his religious
sentiment. So the Modernist is able to say that his religion is not a
mere matter of sentiment, but of reason as well. The Modernist then
brings his reason to bear upon the religious sentiment, and tries to
express in language his religious experience. He admits he can do so
only in language very vague and indefinite, 'in terms quite inadequate
to express his inner experience, in terms in fact little better than
symbols of the religious experience
within him, symbols that shift and change and need to be modified as his
religious experience undergoes modification. These vague and variable
statements are what Modernists call Dogma. They are "tentative and
provisional formulas."{8}

Contrast this Dogma of the Modernists with Dogma as understood by the
Catholic. To the Catholic, Dogma is something fixed, precise, something
stable and immutable; to the Modernist, Dogma is "a tentative and
provisional formula." But -- the Modernist continues -- to the man who
believes, it is natural to wish not only to explain his faith to
himself, but also to communicate it to others. The Modernist does so by
means of the dogmas just described. These dogmas are the outcome of the
religious experience of his individual conscience. By communicating
these dogmas, he associates his individual conscience with the
consciences of others, and this association of individual consciences
forms the Collective Conscience. Here we have all the materials ready
for the formation of a Church. For people who share in this Collective
Conscience are bound together by a spiritual bond of union. It is
natural for people so united in thought to form themselves into a
society, and that society is the Church, as Modernists understand it,{9}
and a Church, with Church authority, for the authority of that Church
is the authority of the collective over the individual conscience. That
is what Modernists understand by the Church and Church authority.
Contrast that with the Catholic conception of the same. The Catholic
says the Church was established by Christ. The Modernist says the Church
is the product of the Collective Conscience. It is true he would add
that this Collective Conscience was inspired by "the spirit of Christ
living and developing in the life of the faithful collectively."{10}
Very well; let us put it that way. The Catholic says the Church is
established by Christ directly. The Modernist says it is established by
Christ indirectly at most, for it is established by the Collective
Conscience inspired by Christ, or by "faith in Christ."{11}
Again, the Catholic says Church authority is centred in the divinely
appointed vicar of Christ, Peter and Peter's successors. The Modernist
says it is centred in the Collective Conscience. Modernism does not
hesitate to say "the entire Christian people is the true and immediate
vicar of Christ."{12}
So the Church, it seems, is not hierarchical, the Church is democratic;
democratic in its origin for it is a product of the Collective
Conscience, democratic in its constitution, for its authority is that of
the Collective Conscience over the individual.{13}

And thus Modernism has reached its goal. It set out to reconcile
Catholicity with the spirit of the age, and it has done so with a
vengeance. Democracy is the spirit of the age, and the Modernist has
succeeded in reconciling the Church with democracy by proving to his own
satisfaction that the Church is democratic in its origin, and
democratic in its constitution. Modernism set out to reconcile
Catholicity with modern thought, and it has done so after a fashion by
interpreting Christianity in terms of Kant. It has adopted Kant's theory
of knowledge, that we can know phenomena only. It has adopted Kant's
theory of religion, that we cannot apprehend God intellectually, but
only by some other method, whether you call it Practical Reason or
Religious Experience matters little. And by such means it has succeeded
in reconciling Catholicity with modern thought, but at what a cost! At
the cost of identifying Catholicity with an unsound system of
philosophy; at the cost
of revolutionising the very notions of things so fundamental to
Christianity as Revelation, Faith, the Church, Church Authority, Dogma;
at the cost of turning Christianity topsy-turvy. Modernism is "another
gospel which is not another." It is the Gospel according to Kant.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Most Catholics today are largely unaware of the history of the Mass. This video by Michael Davies should be required viewing by all those attending RCIA classes and those teaching any history of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Which will you choose?

If people would do for god what they do for the world, my dear people, what a great number of Christians would go to Heaven! But if you, dear children, had to pass three or four hours praying in a church, as you pass them at a dance or in a cabaret, how heavily the time would press upon you! If you had to go to a great many different places in order to hear a sermon, as you go for your pastimes or to satisfy your avarice and greed, what pretexts there would be, and how many detours would be taken to avoid going at all. But nothing is too much trouble when done for the world. What is more, people are not afraid of losing either God or their souls or Heaven. With what good reason did Jesus Christ, my dear people, say that the children of this world are more zealous in serving their master, the world, than the children of light are in serving theirs, who is God. To our shame, we must admit that people fear neither expense, nor even going into debt, when it is a matter of satisfying their pleasures, but if some poor person asks them for help, they have nothing at all. This is true of so many: they have everything for the world and nothing at all for God because to them, the world is everything and God is nothing. (Excerpt from the sermons of the Cure of Ars)

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

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With the start of Lent I thought this would be good to post.
A sermon by Saint Franics De Sales on Ash Wednesday. Enjoy!

(Sermon for Ash Wednesday, February 9, 1622)

These first four days of the holy season of Lent serve as a preface to indicate the preparation that we ought to make in order to spend Lent well and to dispose ourselves to fast well. That is why I thought of speaking to you, m this exhortation, of the conditions which render fasting good and meritorious. I will speak as briefly and as familiarly as possible, not only today but in the discourses that I will address to you every Thursday during this Lent. All will be as simple and proper for your hearts as I can make them.

To treat of fasting and of what is required to fast well, we must, at the start, understand that of itself fasting is not a virtue. The good and the bad, as well as Christians and pagans, observe it. The ancient philosophers observed it and recommended it. They were not virtuous for that reason, nor did they practice virtue in fasting. Oh, no, fasting is a virtue only when it is accompanied by conditions which render it pleasing to God. Thus it happens that it profits some and not others, because it is not undertaken by all in the same manner.

Monday, March 3, 2014

The new Bishop of Ft. Worth has banned Fisher More college from having the Latin Mass. Despite the clear declaration of Pope Benedict's Summorum Pontificum and its accompanying instruction document Universae Ecclesiae, the bishop without explanation has condemned the saying of the Latin Mass at the college. Hopefully the college will be challenging this very soon. See Rorate Caeli for the full story. Below is the bishop's letter, and a response from the Canon Law Centre after being asked for an opinion.

Once more we fall back on the never-failing common sense of Thomas Aquinas:
“Whatever lacks intelligence cannot move to an end unless it be directed by some
Being endowed with intelligence.” The perennial philosophy is perennial because
it is the philosophy of all normal, sensible persons. And no normal, sensible
person believes that the flora and fauna, to say nothing of the humana, of Britain
in 1869 came out of a fiery cloud of incalculable eons ago, without a superintending
intelligence. Only in atheism does the spring rise higher than the source, the
effect exist without the cause, life come from a stone, blood from a turnip, a
silk purse from a sow's ear, a Beethoven symphony or a Bach fugue from a kitten's
walking across the keys. (Fr. James Gillis)

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